


only the living can die

by VictoriaG16



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:53:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaG16/pseuds/VictoriaG16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are days when you have to remind yourself that your heart is beating, that you're breathing, that you're alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only the living can die

**Author's Note:**

> It's actually scary how much like B'elanna I am

You're almost late to your shift because you don't want to get out of bed. The computer tells you to wake up three times before you even have the energy to call out the command to shut it off. The covers are warm around your frigid body, the pillow soft under your hard head. It's comforting here. You're safe, and you don't want to leave safety, no matter how cowardly, how dishonorable that might be. You don't want to face the world today.

You don't want to do anything, actually. Except for laying in bed for the rest of the day. It'll pass, you remind yourself. It always does. You'll wake up again and it'll be okay and you'll be fine. But today is not that day. Not in the least.

You roll over onto your stomach and curl your knees up to your chest and sleep for fifteen minutes more. Then, you force yourself to get up and don your uniform, your fingers stumbling over fasteners and pins in a clumsy, faked dance thinly veiled by professionalism and neutrality. You put on your normal makeup, because you don't want anybody to notice something's different. You brush your hair and your teeth and you manage to step out of your quarters without falling into a confused heap of tears and desperation, right on the deck where everybody could see you. To look as normal as possible was something you'd learned years ago; it was almost your first nature, not even your second.

You eat breakfast, but just enough to keep you from passing out on duty. Your stomach isn't empty or full, and you don't want to eat. You don't want to be sitting among all these people with their loud conversations that make your ears hurt and the laughter that reminds you that you couldn't laugh if you tried; in fact, you'd probably cry instead. They're all so alive, and you feel dead. You let the cinnamon-y breakfast bread roll across your tongue, and think that dead girls don't taste things, but even your tongue seems to be dull today.

You walk to Engineering in a haze, your feet guiding the way to the turbolift and down to the engine room. Normally, you love it. You're _excited_ to wake up every morning and see the warp core, pulsing and thrumming to power the ship. You're doing something you'd wanted to do since you were twelve but believed you couldn't. But not today. Today you don't want to do your job, even if it is everything you've ever wanted to do. You don't want to think about plasma or frequencies or circuitry, you just want to stop thinking. Dead girls don't think, you realize, and maybe you do wish you were dead. But you think you're alive.

Seven's insufferable, as usual. You'd give her a taste of your fist, if you cared that much. Today, she hardly gets under your skin. You just wish she wouldn't talk so loudly. Her logic and efficiency don't account for days when you feel like shit and you don't want to do your job. She doesn't care, and neither do you.

You skip lunch. You tell Harry you'll eat something once you're done with the repair to some of the circuitry on deck ten, but you lied, and you do it again when he returns and you tell him it was quick and he probably didn't see you. You wait until Engineering is mostly empty, and wander the corridors for twenty minutes before returning to Engineering and resuming your work. If there's anything good about having to work, it's that if you're trying to realign power manifolds, you don't have to focus on how you're so tired and empty and lifeless today.

You power through the day with energy you don't have. You can't recall what happened, you don't know if you did a good job today or if you were an utter failure. You assign Vorik the daily report, under the guise of giving the ensign some experience. You don't know if you could pull yourself together long enough to put your thoughts and recollections together in a somewhat coherent form. You don't want to think, and living girls think. Dead girls don't.

The captain stops you on your way back to your quarters and asks you to dinner, that Chakotay and Tuvok will also be joining them, but that it would be better with you. Your heart, just not quick enough today, doesn't skip a beat like it normally would and a smile doesn't reach your face. You want to want to go, but you can't bring yourself to accept. You claim you're tired and look away because she knows you too well and you don't want to be known; you want to be okay.

The first thing you do when you get to your quarters is exchange your uniform for pajamas -- warm ones with long sleeves and pants to keep your little pieces together tonight. Your dinner is a few cookies you find in your quarters, but you don't enjoy them like you normally would. You don't give a fuck. You crawl into the covers and wrap them around yourself extra tightly because that makes it all a bit better.

You can only hope that tomorrow will be better. Dead girls don't get a tomorrow, you remind yourself, but you do. You're not dead, you're living and only the living can die.


End file.
